Erie (tribe)
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The Erie (also Erielhonan, Eriez, Nation du Chat) were a prehistoric group of Native Americans, related to the Iroquois, who lived from western New York to northern Ohio on the south shore of Lake Erie. They were ultimately destroyed by the Iroquois, who adopted some of the survivors into their own group, these being primarily absorbed into the Senecas.
The names "Erie" and "Eriez" are shortenings of "Erielhonan," meaning "long tail." The Erielhonan were also called the "Cat" or the "Raccoon" people. They lived in multi-family long houses in villages enclosed in palisades and grew the "Three Sisters"—corn, beans, and squash—during the warm season. In the winter tribal members lived off the stored crops and animals taken in hunts.
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[edit] Fur trade and Beaver Wars
In the competition in the fur trade, the Erie alienated the surrounding tribes by encroaching on their territories. They also angered their eastern neighbors, the League of the Iroquois, by accepting refugees from Huron villages that had been destroyed by the Iroquois. Though rumored to use poison tipped arrows, the Erie were disadvantaged in armed conflict by having few firearms (If the Erie used poison on their arrows, it would make them the only tribe in North America to do so). Beginning in the mid-1650s, the Erie and other tribes were in battle with their enemies, the Iroquois. As a result of this war, known as the Beaver Wars, the tribe no longer existed as a unit, but dispersed groups survived a few more decades before being absorbed into the Iroquois. Anthropologist Marvin T. Smith has theorized that some Erie fled to Virginia and then South Carolina, where they became known as the Westo. Members of other tribes also claimed later to be descended from refugees of this defunct culture. There are also members of the Seneca people in Oklahoma who still claim to be descended from the Erie nation.
[edit] European contact
The Erie had little contact with Europeans. Only the Dutch fur traders from Fort Orange, now Albany, New York and during the Beaver Wars, Jesuit missionaries in Canada, made contact. What little is known about them historically is derived from legends, archaeology, and comparisons with other Iroquoian people.
[edit] References
- Smith, Marvin T. Archaeology of Aboriginal Cultural Change in the Interior Southeast: Depopulation During the Early Historic Period. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1987), 131-132.
